Knew You Were Gone The Moment That You Spoke
by regancy
Summary: There are worse things than having to share an apartment with a dead Bolshevik, Anya just can't think of any at the moment.


_A/N: I can't even lie this is just me forcing my unrealistic brotp on people.  
But hey! Please let me know what you think_

It's about a week after the events at the Dowager Empress'. She just got home from a day accompanying Nana to one soiree after another and she's exhausted enough to barely noticed the shadowed figure in the middle of her sitting room.

A few days later she's managed to convince herself it was a result of her overactive imagination when she wakes up to Gleb Vaganov standing at the foot of her bed. She screams then, curling herself against her headboard. Gleb stands there, rigid posture and expressionless face, motionless until he lifts a hand towards her before lowering it again.

"Anya" his is thick and raspy from disuse.

 _No, he's supposed to be dead. He_ is _dead. He is standing by her bed. He is dead and standing by her bed, these statements are true at the same time._

"Gleb?" she manages to keep her voice steady "No. You're dead"

He lets out a mirthless chuckle, but says nothing. Her eyes have adjusted to the faint light that the light curtains allow in. Gleb is definitely there, but there's a slight transparency to him. She thinks she can see the vanity behind him if she squints.

 _When she was a child her older sisters had shared stories of spirits who had stayed among the living (stories she had only recently remembered). They had told them to scare her, she knew, but there's was a certain romance in the idea that loved ones found their ways back._

Her eyes fall on his clothes, the same thing he'd worn when he confronted her last. It's caked with dirt and a crimson stain blooms from his breast. She forces her eyes away.

"You went back." Her voice shakes a little this time.

"I had to."

"You could have stayed."

"Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian." There's a light, almost mocking, tone in his voice that sets her on edge.

 _Oh, Gleb…_

 _The spirits in her sisters' had been vengeful. She briefly wonders if that's why he's here; to finish what he started but there's a fatigue to him now, he looks a shell of the man she knew, a man who would have done anything for the Bolshevik cause. He looks desperate._

Anya's apartment: bedroom, kitchen, sitting room, and the ghost of former Deputy Commissioner Gleb Vaganov.

He doesn't seem to find their arrangement as nearly as awkward as she does.

Once he stands behind her while she brushes her hair at the vanity and grazes his fingers across the back of her neck (she sees his hand movements more than she feels the motion). She shivers and turns to look at him but his attention is already elsewhere.

She's perfectly content ignoring Gleb, he can't touch anything or leave her apartment so there's not much for him to do. He takes to wandering every inch of the place, not so much walking as gliding and she isn't sure why it sets her on edge. At first, she thinks he's looking for something and asks him as much but he just shakes his head, so not that. For a man who was so purposeful in life, he is extremely aimless in death.

("The devil makes work for idle hands" she teases once. He fixes her with such an intense stare she has to look away.)

"What happened?" She asks one day, she's not sure she wants to know but she thinks she has to. She's sitting on her divan and he's looking out the window but his gaze is on her as soon as she speaks. "After you left Paris"

He takes a deep breath and returns his attention to the bustling city outside, maybe he didn't hear her?

She's about to repeat herself when he starts talking, throughout his story he doesn't look at her once.

"I don't remember much." He sighs "I returned to Russia-which was foolish but I announced that Anasta- that _you_ had never existed. After work, someone apprehended me from behind and blindfolded me. I remember being lead somewhere outdoors and being forced to kneel. There were voices, I recognized Mikhaev, one of my soldiers, he was a good one, loyal to the end."

He goes silent once more and she feels a few drops hit her arm before she realizes she's crying. Gleb crosses the room to her and attempts to wipe her tears away, apparently forgetting he can't touch anything because the most baffled expression crosses his face when his hand goes through her. She almost laughs.

"When I was a child," Gleb says, resuming speaking "after my father died, after…"

 _After he killed my family_ , Anya thinks with not a little resentment. It's not fair to judge Gleb on the actions of his father, she knows but she can't help these little thoughts from escaping every now and again.

"My mother told me that the dead could return if they had unfinished business in this realm" he pauses "I believe you are my unfinished business. I think you're the reason I'm here"

There's a silence in the room now, not the soothing calm from before this one is suffocating and he's looking at her like he wants her to say something. She says nothing, there's nothing she can say.

"Can you ever forgive me? For everything"

She completely avoids his gaze now, focusing on the clock across the room but she can feel his eyes on her.

"I don't know"

He nods but there's a sadness in his eyes that breaks her heart.

There's a difference between them after that night not that either of them addresses it but she starts spending more time at home. At nights she reads to him, Dostoyevsky and Gogol mostly, sometimes French novels that she translates for him (but she doesn't think he enjoys them as much). He tells her stories, folktales his grandmother had brought with her from Ukraine. They become what she might call friends. And it's so easy to forget that he's dead, but sometimes he'll try to rest a hand on her shoulder and it passes right through her or the room drops in the temperature when he walks in.

Sometimes she'll look up from a book and find him looking at her with the queerest expression.

 _What is that? Envy? Sadness?_

 _Longing._

(She wonders if he's still in love with her.)

Nana comes to call on her once in a while. Her visits agitate Gleb, it's the only times he can actually affect things around him, mostly small objects falling from shelves or rattling. Once after Nana refers to him as "that awful Bolshevik" the phonograph across the room starts playing _Romance in F minor_ by itself. (Lily refuses to return to the apartment after an incident where a porcelain doll had just missed her head. She'd drawn a handkerchief from her bosom and declared something evil residing in the Grand Duchess' home. Gleb was almost crying with laughter in the corner.)

" _What happens after you move on?" She'd asked him one day_

" _I go to whatever happens after, I suppose." He laughs "I wonder what my father will have to say about my actions."_

" _You are more than your father's son, Gleb._

" _Am I?" A pause. "I am not a good man, Anya. I've done things, things I will have to answer for."_

" _You're frightened."_

" _Terrified."_

She has a nightmare, the first one since regaining her memories.

 _She is her but also not. Someone's placed a cloth other her eyes, but she can still feel sunlight on her skin, the air has a slightly perfumed scent, and she's not alone she can tell._

 _Someone is standing in front her she knows because of the spot of darkness barely in the shape of a person that blocks the light._

" _You should know better than to lie than to us"_ Mikhaev _, she thinks and her heart seizes._

" _I didn't I swear. She wasn-"she says in a voice that is not her own._

" _Save your pleas, comrade" and Mikhaev is gone. She hears his footsteps retreat._

 _And then one word._

" _Fire_. _"_

She wakes up in a cold sweat. _Gleb._

"Anya" he is next to her, how did she not notice him? "Are you alright?"

She's just staring at him and crying (is she crying? She can't tell).

"I'm sorry." she can barely make out her own words, what is she even apologizing for?

"What? Anya, what are you talking about?"

" _Can you ever forgive me?"_

" _I don't know" but she does know. She's always known. Then idea of being alone again is so sudden and crushing, she pauses._ No _, this isn't about her, this is about Gleb and what he deserves._

"I forgive you, Gleb. For everything" She can't look at him but she can imagine him brimming with gratitude. He kneels down in front of her, but she can't-won't-meet his gaze.

"моя любовь." he whispers.

He presses his lips to her forehead, or at least that's what he tries to do, he really just passes through her slightly. He stays like that and she tilts her head down to where it would rest against his chest. She wants to say something, anything but he seems at peace and this is how she wants to remember him.

It only takes a second and it's nothing like she thought it would be, there's no blinding white light or angelic harmonies. There is Gleb until there isn't and she swears that for just a moment just before he's gone, she feels lips, warm and dry on her brow, and a rough woolen jacket against her cheek. And just as quickly it's all gone and she's alone in her bedroom.

The room feels too big all of a sudden, but the sun is rising and the city is just stirring. She thinks there is symbolism in there somewhere.


End file.
